Crimson Death

“Destroying it means I will break out of it.”

“The silver will sap your abilities and you’ll be just as human as we are,” he said.

She and Nicky both laughed. Socrates didn’t. “That’s not what silver does to us.”

“I will be just as strong inside either cell. All you need to tell me is which cell you prefer I break out of, and which you want to keep for the vampire prisoners.”

“You haven’t even touched the door or walls yet,” Mort said.

“I do not have to.”

He looked puzzled and almost frowned, but mostly just puzzled. “How can you be that certain you can break out without trying first?”

“I know my capabilities,” she said, giving him that calm face she did so well. I knew from experience that she could hide almost any thought behind that placid mask. It wasn’t the pleasant smiling face that Fortune did; in fact, it unnerved some people because Magda looked almost totally unemotional when she did it. But I knew that she could be feeling anything, everything, behind that look, just like Fortune’s one smile. It was a different way of hiding in plain sight.

Mort shook his head. “I thought I was arrogant.”

“It is not arrogance. It is self-knowledge.”

Mort stared up at her, studying her face and trying to see behind it, I think. He finally laughed. “That makes perfect sense to me.”

“Are you saying your bragging is because you really are that good?” Donnie asked, smiling.

He gave her a look that was a little too direct, but she had started it. “Have I ever said I can do something and not been able to do it?”

She had to think about that for a second or two, and then her smile faded around the edges. She gave a much more considering look. “No, you always do what you say you’ll do.”

“Self-knowledge,” Magda said.

Mort nodded. “Self-knowledge.”

Flannery touched his ear and said, “We have a decision. If it won’t harm Sanderson, we’d prefer she try to break out of the silver-lined one.”

“I’ll leave the choice up to her, as long as we are clear that it’s not an order,” I said.

“I understand it is my choice,” she said, still giving me that blank look that I knew could be hiding almost any thought or feeling. I knew one thing: Whatever was going on behind her blue-gray eyes, if she said she could break out of both cells, then she could.

“Is there anything in the cells that will hurt Magda other than the silver in the paint?” Socrates asked.

“What do you mean?” Flannery asked.

“Is anything booby-trapped?”

It was an excellent question. “I knew I brought you along for a reason, because you ask better questions than I do.”

He smiled at the compliment but gave serious eyes back to the other man. “Is there anything in the cell that we need to know about before we put one of our people inside it?”

“What Socrates said,” I said.

“We are trying to create a jail that will hold the supernatural. A regular jail cell would not be booby-trapped, and neither is this one,” Flannery said.

“Promise?” I said.

He gave a small smile. “Promise.”

I looked at Magda. “It’s up to you.”

She smiled then, and just walked into the silver-coated cell.

“You can’t use any of your weapons to break out, because we’d confiscate them from a real prisoner,” Mort said.

“Understood,” she said. She just stood there calmly, waiting for them to close the door.

Flannery gave the signal and the door started to swing shut. I watched her as long as I could, but her expression never changed. The door closed with a whoosh instead of a clang. I didn’t understand exactly how the door worked, or where the lock was, but I didn’t like having one of my people on the wrong side of it.

I leaned into Nicky and asked, “Would just standing surrounded by that much silver hurt?”

“Not unless it touches our skin,” he whispered back.

Socrates leaned in close and said, “It would still be unnerving as hell.”

“Nothing unnerves Magda,” Nicky said.

I agreed, but I still stared at the door and prayed, Don’t let her get hurt proving this point.

44

THE HALLWAY SEEMED very quiet after the door shut. It was almost like that hush before a storm, or like that moment when you close the door to the gun room behind you and you’re in that little air lock room between the gun shop and the firing range where both doors must be closed before you can open the one that leads to the actual firing line. At the gun range you can hear the gunshots from the next room, but they’re muffled both from the door and the room’s soundproofing and the ear protection you’re already wearing, but you know that on the other side of that last door it’s going to be loud and full of potentially deadly things.

It was quiet for several minutes, so that Brennan said, “She’s not getting out of there.”

Something hit the door so hard the metal rang. Brennan jumped, and he wasn’t the only one. “Magda was looking the door over, figuring out where best to apply force,” Socrates said.

The metal rang again, and there was an almost whining sound with the next blow. “What is that?” I asked.

“The metal protesting,” Nicky said.

A spot in the door began to bow outward. I realized that Magda was kicking the door over and over again in the exact same spot. Had she figured out the lock mechanism? Had she spotted the weakest point on the metal? Or had she just chosen a spot and started pounding at it? I’d ask her later.